Chinese Embassy Gets Briefly Suspended From Twitter; Insists 'Free Speech Must Be Honored' On Platform Banned Across China

Content moderation at scale is impossible to do well. By now we've established that pretty firmly. However, there's something deeply amusing to see that when the Chinese embassy in Sri Lanka was temporarily banned from Twitter over what Twitter later claimed was a "systematic mistake," that the embassy then chose to go on a little righteous rant about free speech needing to be honored.

The Embassy put out a press release more or less saying the same thing:

On 13th April, Twitter suspended the official account of the Chinese Embassy in Sri Lanka (@ChinaEmbSL), without informing any specific reason. The Embassy made solemn representation to Twitter twice, requesting the latter to clarify and correct their decision, to avoid any misunderstanding and random association in the public. In the early morning of 14th April, Twitter officially replied the Embassy for a "systematic mistake", apologized and unsuspended the Embassy's account.

The Embassy feels regretful to this "systematic mistake", and would like to reiterate that the "Freedom of Speech" must be honored, while not be misused to spread groundless, racial or hatred speech, nor be treated with "Double Standards".

At first I thought that the "regretful" feelings indicated an admission that the "systematic mistake" was on the part of the embassy, but it appears that the embassy means Twitter itself. As for the whole "freedom of speech must be honored bit," someone should remind the embassy that Twitter itself is banned throughout China.

However, if I'm reading this correctly, the Embassy is indicating to Twitter that if it merely makes "solemn representations" to the Chinese government, requesting that it "clarify and correct their decision to avoid any misunderstanding and random association in the public," why surely the Chinese government will end the ban on Twitter. Right?